


The Revelation of Brother Eadwine

by Verecunda



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Angst, Crack Treated Seriously, Explicit Sexual Content, Hair-pulling, Historical, M/M, Masturbation, Monks, Religious Guilt, Rough Sex, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25512871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: For the monks of Whitcaster Abbey, illuminating a new volume of the life of their blessed founder was to be a work of purest devotion. But for one of their number it was to prove a trial - and a temptation - beyond endurance.
Relationships: Scriptorium Monk Drawing Dirty Marginalia/Monk in Charge of Illumination Project
Comments: 22
Kudos: 31
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	The Revelation of Brother Eadwine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ficbot5000 (Kryptontease)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptontease/gifts).



> Thank you for such a fun prompt! I had a great time writing this, and I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Apologies in advance for any and all historical liberties and downright errors herein. Mea culpa.

For as long as he could remember, Brother Eadwine had striven to lead a virtuous life. But in his most secret heart he could own, at least to himself, that he was not wholly free from the sin of worldly pride. After all, Whitcaster Abbey was famed across Christendom for the learning of her scholars and the skill of her scribes; and for one of his years — still something shy of thirty — to be entrusted with the charge of the scriptorium, was no mean commendation.

Nor could he have been entrusted with it at a more momentous time, for the scribes of Whitcaster were then employed in a most ambitious enterprise. As the five hundredth year of their house approached, they had been charged by the Abbot to produce a new volume of the life of their founder, the blessed St Aethelric. It was a book that had been copied many times before, but this one was to be fully illustrated and illuminated, a work of surpassing beauty which would test the skill and devotion of Whitcaster’s finest scribes to their utmost, and which would, when it was completed, be sent to Rome as a gift for the Holy Father himself.

That thought alone was enough to check Eadwine’s self-congratulation. Better by far to contemplate the glory to which their work was dedicated.

And to be sure, standing in the scriptorium of Whitcaster, it was impossible not to feel touched by the sublime. A beautiful room, it had been enlarged and refurbished many times over the years, to better befit the great reputation of her scribes. Wide, airy and spacious, it was warmed by its closeness to the calefactory, and its high windows admitted a glorious flood of sunlight, which saved the eyes of the scribes from spoiling, and seemed to fill the whole room with God’s beneficence. Scribing in such a room, one did indeed feel that he was engaged in work that was blessed.

And at least, he thought as he made the rounds of that day’s progress, if there was pride, it was not all on his own account.

“Magnificent work, Brother Cathal,” he said warmly. “Truly exquisite.”

Brother Cathal flickered a glance up at him, a shy smile just touching his lips. “Thank you, Brother.” He dropped his gaze almost at once, and Eadwine smiled upon his bent head. Cathal was a relative newcomer to Whitcaster, having joined them two years ago from an Irish house. He was one of those rare people who seem truly made for the cloistered life, being unfailingly modest and soft-spoken, hard-working and devout. He was, besides, an exceptionally beautiful young man, with a natural grace that not even the black Benedictine habit could hamper; and when the light from the windows caught his fair hair, it gave his tonsure the very appearance of a halo.

In addition to that, though he was barely one-and-twenty, he had already proven himself a most accomplished scribe, and it seemed God’s benison that he should have joined them just as they were embarking on this new copy of the _Life_. He was just then illustrating a scene of St Aethelric preaching beneath the tree to the shepherds, and beneath his pen, the bald lines of the picture were slowly filling with colour. The leaves of the tree and the turf on which the saint sat were each a distinct and vivid green, the flowers of the meadow inked in with such delicacy that the whole parchment seemed to breathe out the scents of early summer into the room. Eadwine could have spent hours appreciating the skill of it, but there were many other tasks that wanted his attention; and so, with a pang of regret and a light touch to Brother Cathal’s shoulder, he moved on.

It was a satisfactory round. Of the others engaged in the work, Brother Hugh was busy burnishing the gilding upon his own page, while Brother Jehan was carefully outlining the border upon his. As for the junior scribes, who took care of the lettering, they knew their business well enough without him breathing down their necks. Thus he ended his inspection and crossed the room to the work-bench. A complement of fresh herbs had come in from the garden, ready to be made up into pigments, and he took note of these before moving on to look over the gatherings that had been set aside to await binding. He examined each one with pleasure, taking in the even lines of script, the glowing colours and bright gilding, the nicest details executed with the most exquisite skill and dexterity…

Suddenly he stopped, his complacency rudely pierced through. For there, on one of the front pages, was an image that surely did not belong. Notes and little drawings in the margins of manuscripts were nothing new. In fact, depending on the talent and invention of the scribe, these little additions, frivolous though they might seem at first glance, could often be imbued with meaning to enhance the message of the text.

But this particular illustration surely had nothing to do with the text it adjoined. It was a perfectly commonplace passage — if he were honest, one of the least interesting in the whole _Life_ ; a mere list of the blessed Aethelric’s ancestors on both sides. Nothing exciting, nothing prurient, nothing at all warranting of what he now saw before him.

It was the image of a woman — a nun, to judge by her dark habit and veil — picking what looked at first glance to be strange fruits off a tree and placing them in a basket. But his heart skipped a beat as he realised that the holy sister’s harvest was not fruit at all, but male members, improbably huge, their heads all tipped with red to suggest a great flowing of blood and vigour…

With a gasp, he snatched his hand away from the page as if it had suddenly sprouted fangs to bite him. Yet for the longest time he stared at it, half-dazed — by its incongruity, its oddness, its bare-faced profanity. His heart was thundering; all at once he felt hot, flushed. He blinked — once, twice — but the image remained, obstinate and obscene.

It had to be some sort of jest. A bad jest, and in abominably poor taste, but a jest all the same. It had not simply appeared of itself; someone must have put it there.

With this thought he turned, thinking he might catch the culprit watching him. But the others were all busy at their work, eyes down, without any appearance of even being aware of anything else about them, let alone of Eadwine at the far end of the room.

Irritated, he shook himself out of his stupor. Whatever this was, it was no more than a piece of foolery, a moment’s high spirits. But he had his duties, and he could not let himself be shaken by something so trivial. So, resolving to scrape it off himself at the first opportunity that offered, he covered the offending thing with a spare piece of linen and went on his way.

-

A week passed, and Eadwine had almost forgotten the lewd drawing in the margin. He had waited till the end of the day then erased it thoroughly, and with utmost care, that only the most deliberate scrutiny could have made out there had even been anything else drawn there at all, let alone what it had been. A job well done, and Eadwine had been glad to put it out of his mind.

So it was a deeply unpleasant shock to return to the scriptorium one morning, sit down at his desk, and discover another filthy scrawl upon the very page he himself was working on.

Though — perhaps “scrawl” was not the right word. It had not been merely dashed off, but sketched and inked in with a care that would have better become a more worthy illustration. There, in one of the blank corners, was another figure. No nun this time, but a man — a monk, complete with tonsure. He stood with his hands outstretched, and with the aid of a little artistic licence, the folds of his habit had been flung aside to reveal his naked cock.

Once again, all Eadwine could do was stare. In essence there was nothing truly erotic about the thing, for it was just a little antic figure, its proportions all exaggerated to the point of absurdity, the sac outweighing the member itself at least twice over and hanging down in a way that in any real man would surely have warranted the attention of a physician.

But there was something in the way the little monk stood, legs braced wide and arms spread, his eyes inked in such a way that they seemed to lock with his own, as if inviting him to look — as if the whole sordid display were for _his_ benefit.

Heat poured through him, and to his shock, he felt an undeniable stirring in his loins.

“Oh, God!”

With a strangled cry, he started back from the desk, his chair clattering back across the tiles and causing the others to look up in alarm.

“Eadwine?” Brother Hugh half-rose from his own seat. “Brother, is all well with you?”

Eadwine’s heart was racing like a charger, and his blood was roaring in his ears so that he barely heard himself falter out: “I… yes. Yes, thank you, Brother. It was a — a cramp, yes, I just had a sudden cramp in my leg.”

Out the corner of his eye, he caught the glance that darted between them. Clearly none of them were convinced. But — God be thanked! — no one said anything more, and they all settled back down to work. For all that, the back of his neck seemed to burn as he took his seat again, and took up his knife to scrap this newest outrage away.

But though it was soon gone from the page, it was not exorcised so easily from his mind. No matter how hard he worked that day, no matter what actually took shape on the parchment before him, all he saw was that little monk and his flaunting of himself. It was as if, in its vividness, it had burned its way straight into his mind’s eye. It even followed him through offices, and was still there when he sat down to the evening meal, where Brother Everard’s soporific drone from the lectern only encouraged a man’s thoughts to wander.

But worst of all was when he retired to bed that night, with no work or study to offer even the hope of distraction. Long after the others had drifted into wholesome sleep, Eadwine lay awake, staring into the darkness above him and seeing only that figure. And the thing that disturbed him the most, even more than the obscenity, was the way in which its eyes had stared unerringly back at him, as if in mockery.

As if they had looked into his heart and seen the unholy, unnatural things hidden there.

-

He passed the next day in a frenzy of zeal. He sang his way through Mass until his throat was raw, raising his voice to Heaven so that God might hear and know his true contrition. It was a fine day and the morning sunlight streamed through the great west window of the church, a glorious benediction of gold and saffron, and he longed to lose himself in its purity. In this same set of mind, he threw himself into his work in the scriptorium. No crude little image awaited him in the margins today, but in its own way that only spurred him to work harder, purging himself in the glory of God’s work.

Yet no matter how hard he worked, how fervently he prayed, the image of that naked figure with its taunting eyes lingered always at the back of his mind.

It was in this same predicament that he found himself that evening, as he sat on a bench in the cloister garth. During the time after Vespers which should rightly be dedicated to personal devotion, he found himself brooding once more on the problem.

It was surely no chance foolery, as he had first thought. The second image had been placed where he could not fail to miss it — upon his own work. Which meant that it was a deliberate act, an insult meant for him. In all justice, he should report it to Father Abbot, or at least to the Prior, so that the thing might be investigated and punished properly.

But even as he had the thought, his mind shied away from it. How could he possibly go before his superiors and lay such a matter before them? It would be like — like spreading a contagion through the whole abbey! Besides, he had already erased the proof. And even if they believed him, they might decide that, having allowed such blasphemy room to flourish under his nose, he was clearly unworthy of the trust they had placed in him, and relieve him of his charge.

Or worst of all, they might even wonder why the unknown offender should have chosen those images, above all, to taunt him…

“Brother?”

A shadow fell across him and, slowly, he raised his eyes to find Brother Cathal looking down at him. The rich deep-gold light burnished the lighter gold of his hair until it seemed almost to give off a radiance of its own. By contrast, his face was mild, with a small, rather uncertain smile upon his lips.

“Oh. Good afternoon to you, Brother.” His voice sounded sullen even to his own ears and, quickly, in a belated effort to sound more amiable, “Where have you been? I missed you at study earlier.”

“I had permission from the Prior to help Brother Luca in the almshouse.”

Despite himself, Eadwine smiled. “You’re a good lad, Cathal.”

Cathal’s fine features gave a little flush of pleasure, but he sobered quickly, tilting his head and studying Eadwine’s face.

“Is everything well with you, Brother? You are not yourself.”

“Aren’t I?” asked Eadwine dully.

“No, indeed. Not for a few days now. We’ve all marked it in the scriptorium: Brother Hugh, Jehan, and I. We’re all quite worried.”

It was unpleasant to think that his disquiet had been so obvious. Bad enough that he should be open to God, who knew the hearts of all men, but to his own brothers… all at once he felt hideously transparent, his skin no more substantial than gossamer, with all the dark, secret things within him on display to all.

When he did not reply, Cathal ventured, “What’s the matter, Eadwine?”

“It’s nothing,” he said, rather too quickly. “I have had a few things weighing on my mind, that’s all.”

“Has it anything to do with the book? I’m sure we would all be willing to help you, if it does.” Just then, Cathal sat down beside him, close enough that his leg pressed against Eadwine’s own, the firmness of it clearly discernible even through the heavy wool of their habits. Eadwine’s breath caught, and he looked up quickly as Cathal added, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

At those words, Eadwine made himself look up to meet his eyes — blue as the heavens, heartbreakingly earnest. They were eyes that invited confidence, promised understanding, and for a wild moment Eadwine was seized by the urge to tell him, to unburden himself of all he had been wrestling with…

_No._ He stopped himself just in time. He could not do that, not to Cathal. For God’s sake, there was no soul more innocent! He had been raised by the Church since his earliest childhood, after a pestilence had carried away the rest of his kin. He had passed his whole life within monastery walls, entirely apart from the world. What could he possibly know of the sins of the flesh? More to the point, how could Eadwine even think of confronting him with his own base nature?

He spared one more glance into those wide, questioning eyes, then looked away, shaking his head. “It’s kind of you to ask, Cathal; I thank you. But no. There are things — challenges — that we can only face alone, by looking deep into our own hearts. They must remain between ourselves and God.”

“Like our Lord in the wilderness,” said Cathal.

His gravity won another smile from Eadwine. “Just so.”

At first, Cathal looked like he might be inclined to press the matter further, but just at that moment Eadwine caught sight of Sub-Prior Thomas entering the cloister. Offering up a silent prayer of thanks for small mercies, he rose quickly to his feet and gestured to Cathal to do the same.

“Quickly,” he said. “If he sees us engaged in idle chatter, we’ll never hear the last of it.”

Cathal darted him a smile and, evading the sub-prior’s beady eyes, they slipped from the cloister and made their escape.

-

Whether he brought the problem before the Abbot or not, one thing was certain. He _must_ find the one responsible. At best they were merely making a nuisance of themselves; at worst, they might become a corrupting influence upon the rest of the scriptorium. They might even pollute the entire enterprise. God preserve him! He must keep that from happening, at any cost.

Who could have done it? One of the juniors or lay scribes, resentful at having not been chosen for the project? Rivalries and petty jealousies flared up within the walls of any monastery, no matter how the Rule sought to safeguard against them.

It might be Brother Hugh. He was older, proud of his talents, and he had certainly taken it ill at first that Eadwine, and not he, had been given the charge of the copying. Might this, then, be his way of taking revenge?

But no, he could not make himself believe that. Hugh might be prideful, and might think himself unfairly passed over, but he was unfailingly devout, and their enterprise meant too much to him. He would never defile the pages of such a book. No, it was certainly not Hugh.

Brother Jehan, then? He was a great jokester, always full of laughter and high spirits. Too high, sometimes: they had caused him to be disciplined more than once in the past. He was, besides, a great one for making up inventive little figures to put in the margins of his pages, people and animals and little grotesque beings that mingled the two together. They cavorted about the borders of his work, and around the illuminated letters, in the most fantastic attitudes, and such was his talent that they always seemed to contain some spark of life of their own.

In fact, the more Eadwine thought about it, sleepless for a second night, the more it seemed incredible that he had not realised it at once. Of course Jehan was the culprit. He had to be.

He resolved to confront him as soon as possible, ideally just after Prime the next morning. But when the time came, he found himself caught up in talk with Brother Donatus regarding the herb garden’s crop of madder, and by the time he extricated himself, the others had already made their way to the scriptorium. 

He followed with all haste, but as soon as he was through the door, it was as if all his worst fears had been realised. Cathal and Hugh were standing about Jehan’s desk with several of the junior scribes, all of them laughing heartily. A bolt of terror ripped through him, and for one intolerable moment he feared he had just caught all three of them in the act of conspiring to humiliate him.

Then Cathal looked up, his whole face still alight with laughter, and upon seeing him cried, “Oh — Brother! Come and see what Jehan has just drawn.”

Surely no man bound for the gallows ever dragged his feet more than Eadwine did then. With the same hideous inexorability of a nightmare, he approached the desk, hardly seeing Jehan’s grinning face as it turned up to greet him, and looked, with dry mouth and pounding heart, upon the parchment.

He blinked. Nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing that was bawdy or blasphemous, at any rate. It took a bewildered moment or two for him to realise that what he was desired to look upon was nothing more than a little fanciful scene of two rabbits tilting at each other from the backs of two hounds. That was all.

Relief — blind, stupid relief — flooded through him. It was only when he glanced at Brother Jehan and saw how his beaming smile had faltered that he realised how long he must have been silent.

“If you don’t like it, Brother, I can always scrape it out.”

“Oh, no!” he cried. “No, Jehan; no, beg pardon, I had something on my mind. No, it’s excellent, Brother. Most amusing.”

Jehan smiled, relieved, and Eadwine sought to shore up the breach further by asking, rather drily, “But — pray forgive me, Brother — what is the meaning behind it?”

This was a usual part of the joke whenever Jehan came up with one of his drawings, and now he answered, in virtuous tones, “Why, to illustrate the frivolity of earthly diversions compared to the work of God.”

They all laughed, and Eadwine smiled, full of relief. “Very well, Jehan,” he said tolerantly, and clapped him on the shoulder before moving away. As he did, the others followed suit and they all returned to work.

It was an industrious day, and ought to have been a pleasant one, for there had been no profanity waiting for him that morning. But though he spent his time gainfully, inking in the outlines upon his page, his mind still gnawed away upon the question of the culprit.

Not Jehan, after all. Jehan was a joker, but his genius lay in fancies such as that he had just seen. Rabbits jousting, knights battling giant snails; at worst, a monkey playing a trumpet out of its backside. Things that were playful and meant only to raise a smile, not strike horror and shame in the breast.

But if not Jehan, _who_?

Almost at once, he felt a warm prickling at the nape of his neck: the awareness of someone’s eyes upon him. He turned his head, and his eyes met those of Brother Cathal, sitting at his own desk across the aisle. It was a look that seemed to fill the space between them, as wine poured from a ewer will fill a bowl. But it lasted only the briefest moment, before Cathal smiled his usual quiet smile, and looked away.

-

The very next day, it happened again.

It happened in much the same way as the last one. He came into the scriptorium after Prime, sat down at his desk, and there it was. There, right within the circle of the great letter Q that headed the page, was another little monk. His face was raised heavenward, his eyes closed in an expression of beatific joy — though this was due, not to any religious fervour, but to the fact that his hands were wrapped around his own bared prick.

At once, to his horror, he felt his body respond, like calling to like. Suddenly he was over-hot, the wool of his garments prickling his skin, and deep in the folds of his habit, his cock began to stiffen. He felt it plain — here, in the middle of the scriptorium, while he sat among his fellows and among the pages of this sacred book.

He knew what he ought to do. He ought to tear the foul thing away, tear the whole parchment from the desk and destroy it on the spot, be damned to the waste.

But he could not. He was transfixed. Though the very sight of it made his skin crawl, it also reached within him and stoked the embers of something deeper and darker, something wound into his very soul.

This was far more disturbing than the ones that had gone before. Not only in the increased vulgarity of the thing, it was the way in which it had been put on the page. Not just scrawled onto any available space like its predecessors, this one had actually been inserted into his own illustration, merging with it — a shocking kind of intimacy.

Then, belatedly, he saw something else, something which had been overshadowed by the lurid details of anatomy. The monk’s tonsure had been coloured in with a few deft strokes of yellow, creating the effect of a circle of fair curls. It made him look beautiful, angelic. It make him look like…

His heart swooped and plunged, and before he could stop it, his head jerked round and his gaze fell at once upon Brother Cathal over by the work-bench, standing quite still and looking calmly back at him.

-

He’d thought he had mastered it. He had done all he could, pushed it down into the deepest, most secret and forgotten parts of his soul. He was no St Benedict, to jump in a thorn-bush to kill the desire of his flesh, but he had been scrupulous in his moderation of himself. He did not watch the lay brothers at work in the fields, nor his brothers when they washed or changed. Instead he had offered up all the ardour that was in him to God, to toil and prayer and song in His name, to acts of charity and mercy, to creating works of beauty to reflect His glory. If he could not purge the thing from himself, he thought, he could at least bury it. And if he had ever looked at Brother Cathal and thought him beautiful — well, at least he had done no more, and no one else would ever know of it.

So he had believed, until now.

Had he been indiscreet, after all? Had he betrayed himself by some unwholesome look or sign? Was it branded on his forehead, like the mark of Cain, for all to see? Or did the taint of it simply hang in the air about him?

Oh God, he prayed, please let it not be so. Again and again, prostrate before the altar long after Compline was ended and he should have been preparing for sleep. But he could not think of doing so. The mere thought of going among his brothers in the dormitory while he was all consumed by these impure thoughts was unbearable.

Over and over he prayed; but with every breath, his mind flickered back to that sight of Cathal, watching him steadily from the other end of the scriptorium, calm and almost smiling. And every time, his heart turned over upon itself. Was it really possible…?

“Why?” he whispered to the empty church.

Why would Cathal, of all people, wish to taunt him this way? Had he felt the force of Eadwine’s desires? Was it an expression of his disgust, that he should seek to torment him with it? The thought pierced him to the core: a stab of hurt, swiftly followed by a leap of anger. Wretched boy! Did he think he was so pious that he could chide his brother monks for being frail and merely human? Was that the part of a saint, then, to mock those less blessed than himself? Who was he to mock Eadwine? He was no one: a nameless orphan out of Leinster, while Eadwine’s father was a man of substance in the world, owner of a manor and lands.

Well, he would not let it master him. He may not be the stuff of saints, but neither was he a beast, driven only by the urges of his body. Whatever the intent behind this taunting, he would resist, and he would conquer it. And he would pray for Cathal, too. _Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us._

So he resolved, in any case, before he crossed himself and left the church at last. But when he finally fell asleep that night, his dreams were filled with images of flesh moving upon flesh, the gleam of sweat upon firm muscles, hot kisses, and fine golden hair running like silk between his fingers.

-

From there, his travails only increased. For, from then on, the images became even more regular. Not every day, but still they came, a torrent of salaciousness. One day, a monk propped up on hands and knees, his habit rucked up to reveal the full curve of his arse; the next, the same monk standing with his back to the onlooker, displaying that arse in full, buttocks spread wide and the dark hole between glaring back at him.

Now, whenever Eadwine came into the scriptorium, he was no longer full of bright anticipation of the day’s work ahead, but braced for the next stage of his torment. And every time he found some new obscenity, he would invariably turn to find Cathal watching him steadily, patiently, with that same suggestion of a smile.

Again he considered going to the Abbot, or at least taking Cathal to task himself. But each time, he shrank from the thought. There were few things that were secret in a monastery; one brother could hardly sneeze without it becoming cause for gossip about the sacristy door. If he took any direct action, it would surely become common knowledge before the next office was rung. And he could not shake off the nagging fear that whatever happened, the gaze of censure and suspicion would most surely fall upon him in the end.

So he did nothing, breathed not a word to anyone else, and burned in silence — burned with anger and shame and desire all together. And all the while, Brother Cathal breezed through the abbey, bright and seraphic and completely above suspicion. He continued to work in the scriptorium, producing illustrations of the most sublime beauty, to sing sweetly in the church, to help about the infirmary and almshouse, and all in all to comport himself with the most impeccable modesty.

Poison, that’s what he was. The thought came to Eadwine one morning at Prime as he watched Cathal opposite him in the choir. Bathed in the radiance of the early morning, he was a picture of most exquisite beauty, the rosy light bringing out all the life and colour in his face. His eyes were wide open, raised to heaven and shining as he sang, ostensibly given up to the glory of the music and unconscious of all else. But Eadwine knew now what he was, just as he knew that Cathal was perfectly aware of his eyes upon him.

Poison, just like the lead and orpiment they prepared in the scriptorium for colour. Wonderful to behold, but mortal to the flesh. Death and corruption disguised as beauty. Look at him there, impostor that he was! Pretending he was as immaculate as the very Virgin. A whited sepulchre if ever there was one. Rage boiled deep in Eadwine’s belly, a terrible blending of fury and desire. How he longed to do something, denounce him then and there, to cross the choir and unmask him, tear off that face of saintly beauty and reveal the devil beneath.

Yet again, the thought came that he should go to Prior Guillaume or Father Abbot. They could deal with Cathal where he lacked the strength. They would punish him as he deserved, bring him before the whole brethren at chapter, where he would be pushed to his knees before them all and stripped to the waist. He would be flogged, the many-tailed scourge raining a series of red weals upon those slim shoulders, stark and throbbing against that smooth white skin. And all the time he would kneel there, giving little gasps with every stroke of the lash, gasps that would turn to low moans, then to cries — cries that blended pain and pleasure…

The words of the antiphon stuck in his throat, wedged there like a hunk of stale bread, and to his unutterable horror he realised he was hard, right there before the altar.

In almost the same instant, his eye was caught by Brother Thomas, who shot him a look of pure affront across the choir. Eadwine’s heart froze, and for a hideous moment he thought his condition had been observed. God help him, it was a wonder they all did not feel the unholy heat coming off him!

Then he realised it was merely his silence the sub-prior had noticed, and that for some time he had been simply standing there with his mouth half-open like a fool. He flushed with embarrassment, but at least it was not the mortification it might have been. Hastily, he remembered himself and concentrated his mind, picking up the thread of the song once more. Brother Thomas spared him one more scowl then looked away, leaving Eadwine to stumble his way through the rest of the office, his face burning and his prick pushing insistently against his braies. He dared not look at Cathal again.

When, after what felt like an eternity, Prime came to a close, all he wanted was to flee, to get out of the church and remove the blasphemous stain of his presence. But when the Abbot dismissed them, he had scarcely turned for the south door when Brother Thomas’ voice rang out behind him:

“Brother Eadwine. A word with you, if you will.”

He bit down on a curse and, with a hard-beating heart, turned to meet his doom. “Yes, Brother?”

“You were negligent during the antiphon.”

Eadwine darted a wary glance from side to side, but the others were departing the church for the beginning of the day’s work, and no one paid the two of them any mind. The sight of a brother being rebuked by the sub-prior was so commonplace that there was no interest in it.

“Yes, Brother, and I’m truly sorry for it. I — I had something on my mind. Something to do with the scriptorium, that’s all.”

Brother Thomas’ brows pinched together. “Is there a problem with the work?”

Oh, God. Why had he said so much?

The lust was already fading, his body returning to its normal state, but he made sure to keep his gaze lowered all the same, lest the impurities of his mind show clear in his eyes as he replied, quickly, “Oh — no! No, we had — ah — a small problem last week with some vellum that had been badly stretched, but it was easily dealt with, and we’re still well within our time. No, it’s only that there is so much to attend to, it fills my every waking thought.”

Brother Thomas sniffed. “Be that as it may, divine office is no time to be brooding on physical labour, no matter how sacred. You must attend wholeheartedly to God’s work.”

Eadwine was sorely tempted to ask why, if that was the case, Thomas had even marked his distraction, but he bit his tongue. He had already invited the sub-prior’s displeasure too far. Instead, he simply bowed his head, hoping that if he appeared suitably contrite, he would be released all the sooner.

“By rights,” Thomas went on, “I ought to make Prior Guillaume aware of your misdemeanour.”

“Whatever you think fit,” murmured Eadwine. He would assent gladly to any punishment, do any amount of penance, just as long as he could get away from this questioning.

“But as you seem conscious of your fault, I suppose I can let it go this time, so long as you make sure it does not happen again.”

“Yes,” said Eadwine, his feet itching to run, “yes, thank you, Brother, that’s very good of you. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I really must get to the scriptorium…”

Before Brother Thomas could object, he pushed his way through the last of the departing throng and fled. His heart was pounding, his blood beating in his ears to match the clatter of his sandals as he made all haste along the cloister. Damn Brother Cathal! Now he had attracted the notice, and in all probability the suspicion, of Brother Thomas, who lived to sniff out the faults and indiscretions of his fellows. And if Brother Thomas had noticed something amiss, who else might have done the same? Who else might start wondering about him?

Reaching the scriptorium, he pulled open the door, only to be confronted by the sight of the others, Cathal at the centre, talking cheerfully together in the middle of the room. At the sound of his coming in, they stopped and turned his way, though the light of their laughter was still in their faces.

“Oh, Brother Eadwine,” said Hugh, “we were wondering where you’d got to. Brother Jehan has just—”

But Eadwine was in no humour to hear of Jehan’s latest foolery. Suddenly, he was furious. With a crash that made them all start, he slammed the door to and cried, “What mean you by this?”

The smiles died on their faces and there were some odd awkward shuffles, before one of the lay scribes plucked up the courage to ask, “Brother? Are you well?”

“And why should I be well,” Eadwine retorted, “when I come in here to find the lot of you standing about gossiping like a gaggle of fishwives? This is a place of devotion and honest work, not a Lammas fair!”

They stared at him — as well they might, for he had never raised his voice to them in such a way before. Unlike some obedientiaries, he had never been one to insist on absolute silence, deeming it no ill thing for the Lord’s work to be attended by good feeling and amiability. But he was too incensed now to consider the injustice of his conduct.

Now Cathal started forward, one hand raised. “Brother—”

“And _you_ ,” Eadwine rounded fiercely on him, “floating around as if you were holier than all the rest of us put together. Why don’t you put some of that holiness into actually working on the book you were chosen to illustrate? That goes for the rest of you, too. Or had you all forgotten this abbey has a good name to uphold?”

And with these words, he thrust his way between them and stalked over to the work-bench, where he immediately started grinding down oak apples, more from the need to vent his spleen than anything else. He was dimly aware, through the red mist of his rage, of the others slowly separating and drifting to their own desks. He tried to ignore them, but on the edge of his hearing he was just able to hear Jehan murmur, “Holy Mother, Cathal! What did you do to offend him so?”

But he did not hear Cathal’s reply.

-

All that day Eadwine worked like one possessed. He was conscious that, following his outburst, a pall had fallen over the scriptorium, and that the others worked in flat silence. But he hardly cared, too intent on his own work. By some small mercy, today was one day that there was no foul surprise waiting for him, leaving him free to lose himself in his craft, fury transmuted into industry. He ground pigments and mixed inks, sharpened pens, outlined sketches and filled in colours, until the parchment flowered into life beneath his hand; and by the time the bell rang for Vespers, he could look upon what he had wrought with a sense of satisfaction.

But it was a satisfaction doomed to be short-lived.

That night, amidst the usual bustle of the dormitory, he sat on the edge of his cot, removed his scapular and stockings, and pulled back the blanket. As he did, his hand brushed against something — something hard and flat and cool, faintly grooved, and which gave a little hollow scrape as his fingers grazed it. A piece of slate, such as they used in the scriptorium for practice sketches. A piece of slate that had been carefully concealed in his bed.

Something deep inside him coiled tightly, and his eyes leapt up, glancing about to see if anyone had noticed. But everyone else was too busy preparing for bed to take much notice of what he did. So, taking care to keep it concealed in the folds of his habit, he drew the slate out and, with a slow-growing sense of the inevitable, looked down.

This time, there were two figures. That they were both men was plain from the shape of their bodies; that they were both monks, from their tonsures. They were entangled in a manner only possible in the imagination of an artist, but there was no mistaking what they were about. They were naked, the hard muscles of chests and abdomen sketched in with a few deft lines, and their limbs were so closely entwined that despite the absurdity of the pose, Eadwine could almost hear the slap and thud of naked flesh, feel the heat, the rhythm, the friction. Their heads were thrown out in opposite directions, like the head- and hindquarters of some grotesque beast of fancy, but they were joined together in the middle, and it was not hard to see where. One figure had his cock in full view, pointing upwards against his belly, but the other…

Now the heat rose again, that terrible tangle of anger and lust, sharp and pulsing. Quickly, he put the slate away, hiding it under his pillow, but it was too late; the image had already seared itself into his mind’s eye, and the raw animal senses within him had awoken in answer to it.

He never knew how long he spent lying there with that thing beneath his pillow. By and by, the dormitory settled into its usual rhythms of the night, the soughing of snores and sleeping breaths, the rustle of someone turning over in slumber. Sounds which should have lulled him to his own sleep, but which tonight had been robbed of their usual power. Instead he lay wretchedly awake, his whole body rigid and burning beneath the blankets, his mind full of nothing but that image upon the slate. His cock was swollen, aching, each pulse of his blood flooding him with fresh desire. In that betwixt-and-between place in the darkest hours of the night, his mind turned the image over and over, transforming those spare scratched lines into living flesh, firm and hot and slick with sweat as their limbs — _his_ limbs — writhed and thrust.

And all around him, his brothers slept, blissfully unaware of the corruption in their midst. Even through his desire, he felt a pang of guilt. His cock lay heavy against his garments, the head scratching against the cloth, and before his mind could catch up with the rest of him, he thrust his hips up into the sensation, choking back a gasp at the spark of pleasure it lit within him.

Appalled, he tried to hold himself still, clutching the frame of his bed in his desperation. What was he doing? What if someone woke? What if they _heard_?

Somewhere further down the dormitory, on the opposite range of beds, was where Brother Cathal lay. Eadwine hadn’t dared glance his way when he found the slate. Now the thought came creeping into his mind: was Cathal asleep now, or was he also lying awake? Did he know — could he feel — what was happening to him here?

The thought sent a flash of heat through him, so swift that he sucked in his breath with a hiss. In the soft quiet of the dormitory, it sounded appallingly loud and, dazed, he wondered that it did not wake the whole house. But on his right hand, Brother Ranulf snored on, and on his left, Brother Owain huffed away like an old sleeping hound. Nothing happened; but still, improbably, he wondered, what if Cathal had heard?

His mind, no matter how hard he tried to empty it, was full of Cathal. Thoughts of Cathal’s slim body and fair hair mingled and ran together with the scene upon the slate, until it was Cathal’s fine limbs entangled with his, Cathal’s body pressed fast against his own, Cathal’s blue eyes that squeezed shut in pleasure as they thrust and ground together — and before he could help it, he was fumbling beneath the blankets, hitching up his habit and pulling his braies down over his hips. Then there was his cock, heavy and hot in the cup of his palm.

The sensation that swept through him left him stunned, and he threw his free hand over his mouth to stay the low groan that welled up his throat — too late. Shame burned darkly through him, and he should stop, he knew it, stop right now — but oh, blessed relief! It dangled there, nearly within reach. Just one stroke could not hurt. Just one, to soothe the ache, then he would take his hand away…

But as soon as he closed his fist around himself and squeezed, he knew there was no stopping himself. It was shameless, it was sinful, and even now he could not forget that he was in the middle of the dormitory, that at any moment someone might wake, or one of the senior brothers might pass by on his rounds — that he could hardly be more exposed if he stripped himself naked in the middle of the town square. But the touch of his hand upon his own flesh was too good to be denied.

So he gave himself up to it, reckless of the consequences. Within the circle of his fist, his cock pulsed, hot blood beneath straining flesh, and he slid his hand up and down, following the thick upraised curve of the shaft, bringing his left hand down to cup his stones, until the breath came harsh and quick between his clenched teeth, and he was trembling and sweating beneath the covers.

Yet still no one woke, no one knew. How was it no one knew? It seemed impossible, above all, that Cathal could not know, could be even now asleep, unknowing of the fire he had kindled in him. Surely it must reach him, even from here, stretching out for him through the darkness. Maybe he was also lying there, awake and aflame, his hands wrapped around his own cock and stroking, harder, faster…

A high, strangled gasp escaped him, and the ache within him leapt suddenly into a great spike that pierced up, up—

And then — _oh God, merciful Christ_ — it was over. Seed rushed hot across his hand and belly, a great shudder wracked him from head to foot, and whatever sense he had left was concentrated wholly on holding back the cry that threatened to tear itself loose from his throat. Then he collapsed, panting like a dog upon the mattress, drained and exhausted, the tide of desire receding at last, leaving behind a tangled wrack of ecstasy and despair.

-

There was no denying it now. Sensuality had invaded every corner of his life, the life that he had striven so hard to make good and virtuous, and now it had infected every pore of his being.

It haunted him through Matins and Lauds, where he stood among the rest of the brethren and sang to the glory of God, horribly aware all while of what lay beneath his habit: the remains of his spend smeared dry across his belly and thighs. Even the day offices, after he’d had the chance to wash himself and change, were a sore trial. He could not even rejoice in the light of the sun through the windows. Now it seemed to glare upon him, its rays marking him out, while the stained glass likenesses of Christ and His saints looked down on him, their eyes full of sorrow for his fall.

But above all, it had found its way into his work. Nothing waited for him in the scriptorium that day, but it hardly mattered now. His own fevered senses had infused themselves into his work, and every time he paused to look over what he had completed thus far, it glared out at him from the page: the colours too vivid, the elaborate sprawling vine that bordered the text almost indecently lush, its fruits and flowers overblown and over-ripe, blooming with the promise of seed and sweetness and succulence.

In a moment of mad dismay he even considered quitting the scriptorium, quitting Whitcaster altogether, and fleeing to the north country to herd sheep with the Cistercians. There was surely nothing in that calling to provoke carnal appetites, whatever crude jokes some might make about the white monks.

Then he came to his senses. He would not run away. Instead he resolved, once and for all, to make an end of this thing.

He was half-afraid of returning to the dormitory that night, but curfew came and went without incident. All the same, he was beset by a palpable sense of something hanging in the air, almost like the heaviness that precedes a storm, a tension that must surely break soon. He slept only lightly until Matins, after which he lay awake and alert, even as the others fell quickly back to sleep, and waited.

His vigil was rewarded at last. Presently, after what felt like an age, his ears caught a rustle of movement out of the silence, followed by the soft, but very distinct, tread of a foot upon the floorboards. Not the clear, purposeful tread of a superior making the rounds; there was something furtive about it, something secret, that caused his breath to hitch.

Then, by the moonlight falling through the nearest window, he saw a figure pass by the foot of his bed. His black habit melted into the shadows and his cowl was raised, but still Eadwine would have known the gait of that figure, and the grace of those movements, even if he were struck blind. His throat went dry. 

_Where are you going?_

Slowly, slowly, Eadwine eased back the blankets and inched out of bed. The floor chilled his bare feet, but he paid it no mind, intent only upon the secret drifting shadow ahead. By now Cathal had reached the north end of the dormitory, and there came the soft creak of a door opening: the door that opened onto the night stair, and thence to the church. It was an odd route for anyone to take at this hour, clearly judged to avoid the risk of creeping past Prior Guillaume’s bed by the south door. Whatever the purpose of this errand, it was meant to remain secret — and, as if Cathal had been attached to one end of a thread and he to the other, Eadwine felt himself drawn to follow.

Soft as a thief, he stole along the length of the dormitory, until the door fell softly shut and he could go more easily. Close to the end of the row, Brother Herbert gave an almighty snort and rolled over in his sleep, which nearly caused Eadwine to jump clean out of his skin. But he caught himself just in time, and made it out onto the night stair without mishap.

Emerging into the great, moon-bathed stillness of the church, he was just in time to glimpse movement out the tail of his eye and hear one of the south doors open and close. So Cathal had chosen this odd, roundabout route in order to come out into the cloister. Eadwine frowned, and hastened to follow.

Once out in the silent cloister, it was easy enough to hear the pattering footsteps, and between the pillars of the southern range he caught sight of the flitting shadow. Then came the sound of another door, and Eadwine’s heart turned over in his chest. The scriptorium. So that was Cathal’s goal, after all. What wickedness was he planning now? Was this what he did every night it took his fancy — sneak down to the scriptorium, just to prepare some fresh torment for him? The thought kindled the anger within him, and he quickened his step. Now, at last, he would catch Cathal in the act and make an end.

It seemed to take an unnatural length of time to reach the door, but at last he put his hand upon the ring and drew it open.

He was not sure what he’d expected to find. Cathal already at his desk — _his_ desk — adding some terrible new mockery to the illustration he had been working on that day? But when he entered the room, he found something quite other. Veils of pale moonlight fell through the windows, and on Cathal’s desk a single candle had been lit. And within the wavering golden circle of its light stood Cathal himself. He had put back his cowl and stood looking back at him with that same faint smile that Eadwine had come to know so well of late. He stood there, still, patient, as if this was a moment for which he had been waiting a long time.

“So you came at last, Eadwine. I was beginning to have doubts.”

Eadwine could not speak. In that moment Cathal looked like something not quite human, something conjured from moonlight and the shadows of his dreams.

At last, through his dry throat he managed to force out: “Why? Why are you doing this?”

Cathal smiled. “What am I doing?”

“You know what, damn you! These lewd scribblings of yours. Defacing my work, _our_ work — the life of our blessed saint. Taunting me, mocking me!”

“Mocking you?” said Cathal, and his eyes widened in honest surprise. “Oh no, Eadwine, that was never my intention.”

“Then what — God’s blood, man — what _was_?”

Unexpectedly, Cathal moved, stepping forward to close the space between them. Eadwine recoiled, but not soon enough, and Cathal’s hand touched him lightly on the chest. In a tone of wonderment he murmured, “Do you really not know?”

Something within Eadwine quivered in response to that touch, but he ignored it. “No, I don’t. Devil take you, Cathal, enough of your riddles!”

“I wanted only to open your eyes,” said Cathal. “To make you see, like St Paul on the road to Damascus.”

“What are you talking about?”

Now Cathal laughed, softly, and shook his head, all fond exasperation. “From the very day I first came to this house, the very first time I met you — oh, Eadwine, you don’t know how I’ve wanted you. How many nights I have lain awake, thinking of you. How many times I’ve put my hands upon myself, imagining they were yours.”

Eadwine’s blood was beating in his ears, and he had all but forgotten to breathe. Part of him longed to flee; but something else — a deeper, more terrible part — was ensnared by Cathal’s words, and it was all he could do to meet those wide eyes, dark as pools in the candlelight, as Cathal went on:

“I thought I must have been obvious enough for a blind man. But you never said anything; you never even seemed to notice, and I thought it was all hopeless. Then, when I began to notice your eyes also upon me—”

“ _No._ ” Eadwine tore himself away.

“When I noticed your eyes upon me,” Cathal forged on, heedless, “I began to hope that something might happen, after all. So I got bolder. Yet still you said nothing.”

Now it was Eadwine’s mind that was racing, sweeping back over all the times he had spent in Cathal’s company, all the conversations they had shared. Now so many things that had passed between them, looks and smiles and touches to the arm or shoulder, things that had seemed so innocent at the time, now appeared in a much different light. And at that he had a dreadful sense of something awakening deep within his heart, something dangerous and unfettered that might run wild at any moment…

“I didn’t…” he protested weakly. “It was never my intent…”

“Oh, I know that now,” said Cathal. “At first I didn’t know what to make of it. But then I came to know you properly, and I understood. Oh, Eadwine, you live for nothing but your work, for this scriptorium and the books and the copying. You see nothing else. What was I to do? So I had the idea of getting your attention the only way I could — through the very pages you were illuminating. And it worked.”

Eadwine stared at him, aghast. The blood thundered hot in his ears, and within the space of a heartbeat, he felt all his bewilderment flare up into a sudden gout of fury. “ _That_ is why you did all this? To seduce me? Christ God, Cathal, have you forgotten that we are monks, bound by vows of chastity? That for men to lie together is to flout the law of nature, the law of God?” In his desperation, he seized him by the arms. “What sort of a man are you? Are you even a man at all? Or are you some agent of the evil one, bent on dragging me down into sin with your temptations?”

Cathal only smiled, serene. “Then you admit you were tempted?”

Stop talking. That was all Eadwine wanted, for him to stop talking, stop that relentless flow of blasphemy. But somehow — he never knew how — outrage and temptation became one, and before he quite realised what he was about, he lunged forward and covered Cathal’s mouth with his own. 

It happened so quickly, and with such force, that Cathal stumbled back into his desk, which jarred beneath his weight and caused the candle to teeter dangerously. It righted itself in a moment, and they were spared disaster, but it proved the perfect opportunity for Cathal to clutch Eadwine’s arms and pull him closer, pressing their mouths more completely together.

And Eadwine knew he was lost.

It was like something being torn away, whatever flimsy partition it was that separated man from the beasts. The lust reared up within him, hot and savage, roaring through his blood and turning his very nerves to fire. He was hard at once, almost to the point of pain, and he uttered a snarl that was instantly lost in the wet heat of Cathal’s mouth. In response, Cathal gave a great shudder — Eadwine felt it, clear against him — and pressed himself deeper into his arms, returning the kiss with a fervour that more than matched his own fury. His lips were soft against Eadwine’s own — so very soft, softer than Eadwine had ever imagined — and there was a sweetness to his mouth that Eadwine could only just catch…

Then came a warm, slick pressure: Cathal’s tongue, nudging his lips apart and slipping into his mouth. It sent a scattering of sparks up and down his spine, which burst into white fire as Cathal’s tongue stroked along the length of his own, sensuous yet at the same time insistent, goading him into action. He answered the challenge, thrust his tongue against Cathal’s until it yielded and left him free to delve deep, plundering the warmth, the wetness, chasing that elusive sweetness once more. And all the time, Cathal’s body pressed against his own, lithe and pliant as a willow-wand even beneath the heavy folds of his habit, warm even through all that thick wool; a warmth that matched and reached out for his own.

Suddenly, the kiss was broken, and for half a heartbeat Eadwine was left bereft. Then a great, shocked shudder rippled through him as Cathal laid his tongue against the column of his neck and swept upwards in one long, slick stroke. The lascivious intent of the gesture was so plain, so shameless, that it stole the breath from him. But he had not even time to recover from that before he felt, unmistakably, Cathal’s hand insinuating itself between his thighs, pulling aside folds of wool to press with deliberate insolence against his cock. Heat flashed through his loins, raced out to his very fingertips; his whole body stiffened, and he felt himself swell further beneath those slender figures. With a gasp he pulled away, and in doing so his eyes locked with Cathal’s, huge and dark with desire.

“If you only knew how I’ve longed for this,” he whispered, and Eadwine groaned as he moved his hand along the shaft, feeling out the shape of him through his garments. “How many times I have imagined taking you like this in my hand, or in my mouth, or in my very body — deep and hard, until your name was the only thing on my lips…”

Those words, and the images they conjured in Eadwine’s mind, sent a hot wave of lust breaking over him. He closed his eyes, as if that could in any way withstand it, but it swept over him, through him, filling every pore of him with its awful power.

With all the wildness of anguish, he threw himself at Cathal once more, grasping him to him and taking his mouth brutally, until their lips must surely be bruised from the force of it. His body was burning inside and out, his cock aching fiercely. Beyond saving now, he pushed one thigh between Cathal’s, pinned him hard against the desk and thrust himself against his slim frame. Cathal, for his part, writhed against him with wild exhilaration, uttering soft little cries that filled Eadwine’s mouth with heat and shivered through his insides. He swallowed those each cry until his chest grew tight, whereupon he wrested Cathal’s mouth from his, leaving them both gasping and straining for air.

Not leaving Cathal the chance to act, Eadwine grasped his head roughly between his hands, curling his fingers tightly through his hair. “Is that what you want?” he rasped. “For me to fuck you?”

The profanity startled him, thrilled him, and it seemed to do much the same to Cathal, for he shivered in Eadwine’s arms and breathed, “Yes… oh, _yes_. That is what I want.”

His face was flushed and contorted with pleasure, his fair hair tousled about his head, his lips wet and red and gleaming. He looked wanton, sinful, beautiful, and the sight of him inflamed Eadwine with a dark, barbarian urge to _have_. He would make Cathal pay dearly for his fall, slake all his body’s lusts upon him until he, too, was ruined beyond recall.

With that thought, he put his mouth to the arch of Cathal’s bared throat, to the place where the blood beat visibly beneath the skin. The pulse thrummed beneath his tongue, clear and vital, and he sank his teeth into the spot, making Cathal cry aloud.

“ _Eadwine—!_ ”

With a bestial growl that he could scarcely believe came from his own lips, he took Cathal roughly by the shoulders and spun him round, shoving him flat against the high slope of the desk. Cathal gave a grunt, which sound somehow even managed to sound ecstatic, and brought up his hands to cling to the desk’s upper edge. The whole thing protested beneath them as Eadwine added his own weight to Cathal’s, pinning him in place and mouthing hotly at his cheek, his temples, his earlobes, wherever he could reach. Cathal’s head turned to meet him, lips parted and panting, seeking another kiss. And Eadwine granted it, fixing him in place with a hand at the nape of his neck as he took his mouth again.

His cock pulsed hard and, dropping his hand to press between Cathal’s shoulder-blades, he reached down with the other and hitched up his habit. With a jolt, he saw now that Cathal wore nothing else beneath, his long legs and backside already naked. He had been in no doubt at all as to the outcome of their confrontation here. The thought sent a fresh burst of anger through Eadwine, glaring even through the blaze of lust.

He ran his palms over Cathal’s naked arse, savouring the firm, clean curve of his buttocks, the smooth white skin. How strange, that such an ignoble part of the body should look so pristine. All at once, he was filled with the urge to mark it, despoil it. 

Hardly thinking what he did, he raised his hand and brought it down against one buttock. The force of the blow was such that the sound of it rang through the room and left a sting across his palm. Beneath him, Cathal’s whole body went rigid, and he threw his head back, loosing a sharp little cry that mingled startlement and delight.

“Ah — yes!”

Spurred by this response, Eadwine struck him again, harder, bringing his hand down against the second buttock. He did it again, and again, until that smooth white arse was flushed red and Cathal was clinging to the desk, writhing shamelessly beneath every blow.

“Eadwine — ah — _Eadwine!_ ”

The sound of his name on Cathal’s lips — the raw, helpless want in it — seared through his brain, eclipsing all else but the dark, possessive fire that had taken hold of him. Ensuring that Cathal’s habit was securely bundled above his waist, he pressed in close against him once more, putting his lips against his ear.

“Hold still.”

Cathal shivered, but before he could make any reply, Eadwine pushed him roughly against the desk, holding him in place with one hand, while with the other he fumbled with his own garments, almost wrestling with them in his haste. Then — cool air against hot flesh, making him hiss aloud and sharpening his desire even further. Then he returned his attention to Cathal, cupping the curve of a buttock in his hand and squeezing hard.

“The candle,” Cathal gasped out. “The tallow. You can use it to ease the way.”

Even through the unholy fire of his lust, Eadwine could see the wisdom in that. He leaned over Cathal’s shoulder, blew out the candle, then quickly delved his fingers into the softened fat. It was warm and slick on his fingers, and the thought of using it upon both himself and Cathal gave him a strange thrill of anticipation through him.

With one hand braced upon Cathal’s shoulder, he ran his greased hand over the swell of his arse, over that mortified skin, before slipping into the cleft to find the opening he sought. He found it, small and secret, rubbed his thumb over it, and relished the shiver that passed through Cathal’s body in response.

With rough fingers he pressed inside, guided by no more than the instincts of his own body. At once, he was enveloped by tight, grasping heat that closed about him and drew him further in. He moaned, surprised by the strange pleasure of the sensation, and in the same instant heard Cathal choke back a gasp. Growling, he pushed further, thrusting his fingers deeply in and out, opening, stretching, until Cathal was moaning aloud and clasping the desk with white knuckles, pushing shamelessly back against Eadwine’s fingers.

“Oh, Eadwine. Eadwine, _please_ —”

Suddenly his voice achieved a new, breathless pitch, and he clenched tightly around Eadwine’s fingers. Eadwine shuddered, then moved his fingers as before, thrilling as Cathal’s back arched sharply and he uttered another little cry of, “Yes!”

The desire in his voice made Eadwine’s prick throb. “God help us,” he growled, “what a little harlot you are.” And with those words, he curled his fingers sharply, drawing forth from Cathal something that was very near a scream.

He might have spent the rest of the night there, driving Cathal to the extremity of lust, a fitting vengeance — but that his own lust was burning fierce and hot, and all he could think of was having that lewd heat tight about his cock. Judging that Cathal’s body must be ready to take him now, he removed his fingers in one sharp movement, enjoying the low, disappointed moan that escaped Cathal’s lips. Then, gathering up more grease from the ruined candle, he reached down and took himself in hand. The slickness of it felt good upon his hot flesh, and the raw animal smell of it reached up into his nostrils, making his head reel.

Enough. He was as hard and hot as a smith’s iron, fit to burst at any moment. He could wait no longer, so he took Cathal firmly by the cowl and pressed himself against him, sliding his cock along the cleft of his arse. Cathal whined and squirmed impatiently, which made Eadwine growl and tighten his hand upon his shoulder. “No. We do this my way now.”

With his free hand he grasped Cathal hard by the hip, and in the same instant thrust forward. Then — oh, _oh_ — there was only the heat, tight and sinful and sweet, seizing him and pulling him in — and his sin was complete.

Thought fled; there was only need — the need to thrust, to fuck. And almost before he knew it he was moving, plunging into that greedy, eager heat, burying himself to the hilt with swift, brutal strokes, each one tearing a gasp from the depths of his throat and sending the fire within him leaping ever higher. He was all ablaze, his blood turned to Greek fire, and through it all came the thought that this was sin: a glory too dark to be holy, too intoxicating for mere flesh to resist; and he was helpless to do anything except give himself up to it.

And beneath him Cathal was moaning, writhing, tossing his head back in abandon, face raised to Heaven as if it could possibly help them now. He clung to the desk with the desperation of a drowning man, and every moment of their bodies had the wood groaning. His own hips were moving, thrusting, and dimly, Eadwine realised that his cock must be trapped between his body and the slope of the desk, and was even now must be rubbing against the very page that he had begun marking out that day, chafing against the parchment, spreading his seed upon the lines meant to record the life of a blessed saint. The thought burned through him, appalling and delicious, and he gave a sudden thrust, sharper than the rest, and arched over Cathal’s back to mouth at his neck.

Yet even as he did, the desk sent up one last despairing groan, which quickly turned into a great rending crack; one leg of the desk splintered beneath them, and they were both slipping, falling amid a great shower of pens and knives and ink-pots. With a grunt they hit the floor, bruising themselves upon the tiles, still joined like some grotesque beast from a margin drawing, there among the debris of the fallen desk.

_Yes_ , thought Eadwine darkly. Yes, this was the proper place for them, here on the ground like the beasts. With that thought he struggled to kneel, fragments of broken oyster shell sharp beneath his palms and knees, and reached again for Cathal, who was lying winded beneath him, grasping him by the hips and pulling him back to him. Cathal obliged, propping himself up on hands and knees, raising his arse like an offering as Eadwine’s cock slipped fully in once more.

He had him there, among the ruin of the desk, rutting like the very basest of God’s creatures, taking Cathal with such savagery that his own body ached with it, and he wondered that Cathal’s body did not split in two beneath him. As it was, the muscles of his arse and back rippled from the force of each thrust, and his voice broke upon his cries. His hips were still straining, even now, and Eadwine glimpsed one of his hands creep inward between his thighs. Seeing this, he gave a snarl, and reached out to pull Cathal’s head back by the hair.

“No,” he growled against Cathal’s ear. “You’ll wait till I’m finished with you. Do you hear?”

“Yes,” breathed Cathal.

His obedience was wonderful to behold. Tangling his fingers in those golden curls, Eadwine jerked Cathal’s head even further back, bringing it round to capture the resulting gasp in his own mouth. A hard, deep, bruising kiss, that had them both groaning for breath by the end of it, their mouths drinking in the same hot, breathless air. Then Eadwine shifted the angle of his hips and began to ravage Cathal’s body with series of short, harsh, deep thrusts that dashed the breath from him and turned Cathal’s gasps near to sobs.

“Oh, Eadwine — oh, God—”

_Mea culpa. Mea culpa._ The words beat in Eadwine’s head with every thrust; his very blood resounded with him. But he was beyond help now, borne along on the flood-torrent of his desire, by an exhilaration such as he had never known before. It drove him on — on and on — higher and ever higher. His limbs ached; his throat was hoarse; the sweat flowed freely on his skin and itched beneath his habit; but it was all as nothing compared to the blaze within him. Let it consume him, let it turn him to ash; he no longer cared. All he wanted was the end…

And then — _Gloria in excelsis_. With one final thrust, something within him broke. At the same time, Cathal’s body gave a sudden great clench around him, and a high, triumphant cry escaped him. The feel of it, the sound of it, was enough to send Eadwine over the precipice himself, and his body suddenly went rigid, even as a sheet of white fire passed through his soul and he gave himself up to exultation.

-

“We ought to get up. They will be ringing Lauds soon.”

Hearing this, Cathal gave a little grumble of protest and stirred against him. He turned over, disengaging himself from where he had been lying in the crook of Eadwine’s arm, and fixed him with eyes that were, for the first time tonight, grave.

“And what then?”

Eadwine did not answer, only sighed and hung his head. Now that the great fury of his lust was spent, cold reason had come to lie in its place. They were still entangled among the remains of Cathal’s desk and its scattered contents, lying much as they had fallen, limbs splayed, garments disordered. Cathal’s habit was still rucked up above his waist, and bruises had begun to bloom darkly about his hips and thighs where Eadwine had grasped him. Swallowing, he traced his fingers over them, seeing appalled where they matched the span of his own fingers. His stomach heaved. How could he have forgotten himself so far as to use Cathal with such barbarism? Whatever provocations he might have endured, there could be no excuse for that.

“God forgive me,” he murmured. “I am sorry. Cathal, I… I do not know what to say.”

But Cathal lay a hand over his own, slipping his fingers between Eadwine’s and keeping his hand there. “There’s no cause to be sorry, Eadwine. You did only as I wished. What we both wished.”

Eadwine was silent. The memory of all that savage pleasure returned to shame him. He had given up his chastity, and in doing so had made a beast of himself.

“I should have resisted,” he said in a low voice. “I should have — oh, I don’t know what I should have done. I do not know what to think.”

Cathal raised a gentle hand to cup his cheek. He smiled, softly, and with that he was the old Cathal again, the friend Eadwine knew. 

No, Eadwine corrected himself, as he look back into those great eyes, not the old Cathal. The same Cathal, just as he had been all along. It was only that Eadwine had discovered greater depths to him, secrets that matched those within his own soul. He sighed, yielding to the truth, and leaned into Cathal’s hand.

“What happens now?”

“That is up to you, I think,” said Cathal. “I know what I would like—” he curled warmly into Eadwine’s side— “but you must decide what you want.”

Eadwine let out a gust of breath. “You make it sound so easy.”

Cathal shrugged lightly. “It was for me. But Eadwine—” and for the first time that night he looked uncertain— “I said before I wished to make you see. If you don’t want — if you decide you have seen enough, I won’t resent it. I will understand.”

In truth, he was torn. Lying as they were, still smeared with the sweat and seed of their congress, surrounded by the clutter of the broken desk, it was easy to feel filthy, ashamed, unworthy, as if his very vows lay broken and scattered among the debris. But even through the shame, the memory of pleasure was warm within him, in the very strain of his muscles as he moved; and there could be no forgetting how it had felt at the very peak of his ecstasy, the joy of revelation. There was even sweetness just in lying together like this, limbs entwined. A sweetness that felt kindly, pure: something far removed from sin. Perhaps — the thought now entered his mind for the first time — sin was not the whole story of what men might do together. Had not Jonathan loved David as his own soul?

He let out a heavy sigh and dragged his fingers through his hair, head whirling with all these conflicting notions. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “This is not a decision that I can make at once.”

Cathal nodded, quite grave, then touched a hand to his wrist. “Answer me this, at least. Do you regret what we did tonight?”

The answer to that was there upon his lips at once. “No.”

-

“Sublime work, Brother Eadwine,” said the Abbot warmly.

Eadwine bowed his head, praying he did not look too pleased with himself. “Thank you, Father. It is far from finished, but I’m glad it meets with your approval.”

For more than a month now he had been working on a single illustration, a full-page depiction of St Aethelric’s visitation by the angel of the Lord. It was intended to occupy pride of place in the book it was completed, and so the Abbot and Prior Guillaume, with Brother Thomas also in tow, had come down to view its progress. It was only partly coloured, and as yet the spaces marked out for gilding stood conspicuously vacant, but he was pleased with how it was taking shape, and had high ambitions for the rest. He was glad that it pleased Father Abbot, and even Brother Prior seemed impressed.

“Truly, Brother, when this is finished, it will be the very ornament of the book.”

“Yes,” said Jehan cheerfully, “it even outdoes my griffin-headed snail.”

This earned him a sharp look of rebuke from Brother Thomas, but the Abbot merely smiled. “Brother Jehan’s modesty is a lesson to us all, I think. But in all justice, Brother Eadwine, you have much cause for satisfaction. Like our blessed founder, I think you must have received your inspiration direct from the divine.”

Eadwine smiled. “Hardly that, Father.”

He spared another glance at his creation: at the kneeling figure of the saint, his hands upraised and face expressive of wonder and joy at the Truth he now beheld; and at the divine messenger, smiling and radiant, curling hair already tinted with a few strokes of yellow ochre. Then he lifted his eyes and met those of Cathal, who met his look with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of Brother Cathal and Brother Jehan's drawings in this story are based, to varying degrees, on actual medieval illustrations and marginalia, so in the name of Serious Scholarly Interest (honest!), here are some links (NSFW in most cases!):
> 
> [The fabled dick tree.](https://images.app.goo.gl/8WRzusxFM1CqCMtz9)  
> [The great rabbit jousts.](https://images.app.goo.gl/WxGp3nBSoGeqZc2S9)  
> [Butt trumpets!](https://images.app.goo.gl/fgtNgUGCesNdgntb6)  
> [In fairness, this one is from a medical text.](https://images.app.goo.gl/zM4JLnkkBpavpJbs7)  
> [Apparently Goatse also existed in the Middle Ages.](https://images.app.goo.gl/iZaGquEEeJrnsHqC6)  
> [From The Book of Gomorrah.](https://images.app.goo.gl/jYLHWhWUndwQuGwN8) 'Nuff said.  
> [I don't even know what's going on here.](https://images.app.goo.gl/r1YYpBYj4mCB5ocZA)
> 
> And that's barely even the tip of the iceberg! Expert opinion remains divided over what - if anything - these images mean. Here, I merely adapted them for my own prurient purposes. ;)


End file.
